Intriguing New Development on Tabby's Star (KIC 8462852)

originally posted by: Bedlam
Maybe the star had something unusual occur. Like ingesting a black hole.

Actually, the black hole would be ingesting the star. In this event, wouldn't there be an net emission of radiation as the star was eaten? Could the
star be running out of mass?

They looked carefully for companion stars to KIC 8462852. They found a fairly distant red dwarf, but no black hole. A black hole consuming Tabby's
Star would produce x-rays. An x-ray survey including this star turned up nothing.

They looked carefully for companion stars to KIC 8462852. They found a fairly distant red dwarf, but no black hole. A black hole consuming Tabby's
Star would produce x-rays. An x-ray survey including this star turned up nothing.

A black hole orbiting the star and consuming surface material would. But what if you dropped a slow moving one that goes in and just farts around in
the inner parts of the star?

I don't see the picture you're trying to paint with words, can you paint a picture instead ?

Not without a digitizing tablet. Consider. You have a very slow incoming small hypermass. It drops through the system, encounters the star, and goes
into orbit inside the star's radiation zone. Down there, the x-ray emission is absorbed by the star's mass and re-radiated as heat. You might not even
be able to tell there was something in there, unless maybe the thing had a really elliptical orbit. But it's hoovering up some of the core pressure.
It's cold. And it would disrupt magnetic fields.

How about a rogue planet like Jupiter in line with the observations? The debris field around that would have to big but nowhere as large as required
to create the effect on the remote star. Since it reappears it MUST be rotating around some thing.

If a large, rocky, and probably geologically inert world had been cracked apart by a comet strike, it is possible that its orbit would be populated by
the largest of its remains, in a thick ring around the star in question.

Not necessarily , to encase a star with a Dyson Sphere is impractical if you consider the size of stars , the resources needed would be immense plus
you have the problems with stability of the structure and maintenance.
A Dyson swarm could give you all of the benefits without the associated problems , plus if it's your parent star you wouldn't want to encase it
anyway.

Fragments of a broken-up planet were considered as a possible explanation for the dimming of Tabby's Star. They found that so much dust would have
been created, that we should have been able to detect it. They looked repeatedly, but no such dust was found.
As far as I can determine, Freeman Dyson never thought in terms of a solid shell for a Dyson sphere. As a physicist, he would have known that this
couldn't be sustainable. He seems to have had in mind what is meant by the term Dyson swarm.
In the case of the Tabby's Star system, the large F3 star that could be partially surrounded by a Dyson swarm may not be anyone's home star. The red
dwarf companion star might be the host of any life in this system.

Just for the sake of discussion, let's assume an intelligent life form had evolved to a level in which they had mastered space travel. It could also
be safe to assume that they may amassed a large population by this time and were ready to expand and colonize other planets. It may have taken a very
long time to reach this stage in their evolutionary development and their parent star may be approaching an end to its life cycle. Rather than, or
they may have already, colonize any planets within their solar system, they look for another suitable system with a younger star so their species will
have longer and better survival prospects. They find such a star but it does not have a planet within the proper position. They could then embark upon
a long term plan to design and build their own habitat in the form of a ring rather than a sphere.

A fabricated structure would have to be made considering the best usage of all materials involved and would likely not be of sufficient mass to
generate the same gravitation field as a planet. This would necessitate the need for the entire structure to be orbited about its star at a rate which
would induce sufficient centrifugal force as to simulate a gravity field. This would not be practical with a spherical structure. This ring would
therefore completely encircle its star, but would not necessarily be set on a singular constant angle with respect its equator.
Oh yes, I do realize I am talking about a structure which could easily be 10000 miles wide, 1000 miles thick, and almost 565 million miles in
circumference; moving in an orbit around a star. This would be a marvelous accomplishment for any life form but could be the long term answer to
acquiring living space for its population. As most of the volume of this structure would be open space, the maintenance of the atmosphere would be a
prime priority. Since it is an artificial habitat, there would be no natural resources, they would be dependent upon gathering material from the
surrounding area of space for any manufacturing to be done. I would guess the recycling of materials will be of paramount importance and waste would
not be encouraged as it is with the terrestrial societies I currently know about.
The inner surface of the ring would, of course, be utilized to gather the energy from the sunlight which shown upon it, thus lowering the amount of
light which would be perceived by others looking in the direction of this star. Dependent upon the needs of the inhabitants, the width and depth of
such a ring structure could easily be enlarged over time until the life of the star again became a factor.
This would be a much better scenario for the expansion of a civilization than simply hopping from one star system to another. While there would be
engineering and construction challenges; there would not be the need for conquest of new lands and/or the chance encounter with unknown predators’
or deadly pathogenic viruses or bacteria.
This is, of course, my own thoughts on how a “civilized” civilization could move across the universe without the need for clashes with others.
Also, this would seem to be as valid a possible explaination, even as far out as it may be, as most any other; until the true nature of this mystery
is found.

originally posted by: eriktheawful
What would be telling is that amount of dimming increasing over time. It could mean something being built that is covering up more and more of the
star's light.

That would be really suggestive.

The whole: "We listed to it with radio receivers and didn't detect anything, there for it's natural" thing doesn't sit well with me.

It could easily be that there is someone there but they use a different form of communication that we can't detect, or moved on from using the EM
spectrum, and could have done it long ago, to where now, there is nothing to detect. All radio waves from them have come and gone.

Personally I think they should keep the door open on KIC 8462852

We have to keep in mind, that assuming it were an alien civilization, they'd likely have gotten telescopes able to detect nearby planet atmospheres,
and tell of likely inhabited worlds nearby. Knowing of a nearby possibly inhabited world like ours, they could've chosen to become silent to
postpone the time of detection from our side as late as possible.

A Dyson swarm could give you all of the benefits without the associated problems , plus if it's your parent star you wouldn't want to encase it
anyway.

What I'm wondering about dyson swarms is: are the swarm component orbits stable? or do you need correction with propellant from time to time?

If it needs propellant use, there might not be issue for millions of years, but say around a star that lasts trillions of years, won't all that
propellant use add up? can it be maintained for trillions of years if its components need to use propellant to stabilize position?

This is great news!
.:.Dyson Swarm is key.:.
"The variant closest to Dyson's original conception is the "Dyson swarm". It consists of a large number of independent constructs (usually solar power
satellites and space habitats) orbiting in a dense formation around the star. This construction approach has advantages: components could be sized
appropriately, and it can be constructed incrementally.[5] Various forms of wireless energy transfer could be used to transfer energy between
components and Earth.

Disadvantages resulting from the nature of orbital mechanics would make the arrangement of the orbits of the swarm extremely complex. The simplest
such arrangement is the Dyson ring, in which all such structures share the same orbit. More-complex patterns with more rings would intercept more of
the star's output, but would result in some constructs eclipsing others periodically when their orbits overlap.[10] Another potential problem is the
increasing loss of orbital stability when adding more elements increases the probability of orbital perturbations.

As noted below, such a cloud of collectors would alter the light emitted by the star system. However, the disruption compared to a star's overall
natural emitted spectrum would most likely be too small to be noticed on Earth" Dyson Swarm

For the mechanics of a swarm a decent read is Neal Stephenson's
Seveneves
. A (very) brief synopsis:

The Moon breaks apart and eventually peppers the Earth with a "Hard Rain" that wipes out everything. Prior the world's nations band together and
launch a few thousand people into earth orbit to survive the coming rain. Only seven women manage to survive (The Seven Eves), but out of their
ingenuity arises a space-based civilization that mines the asteroid belt to build a ring around the Earth. 20,000 years later they attempt to
re-populate a recovering Earth, with much ensuing insanity and mayhem.

I realize the novel is talking an earth ring, not a sun ring, but the mechanics of their survival is an interesting read and some of the percepts may
apply to the current discussion. Stephenson's novels are meaty reads and very captivating for those with sufficient patience to read them.

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